The funny thing about NYC

So i ran into my friend today, who with a gigantic smile on his face said he needed to tell me about his latest card giveaway. He was on the train and across from him was this girl that just had this incredible smile, he said it literally melted him in place. So he decided that he needed to give her a card. But she was with a friend, and the train was crowded and he didnt know how to go about and do this, and said he felt very reminiscent of what i felt in my last failure. He couldn't gather up the nerve and it didnt happen.

Well here is the funny thing about NY. In a city of millions, it is still surprising how you still manage to run into people you don't think you will run into.

He had left the train, feeling like shit, and gone to school. As he was walking down 13th st, he all of a sudden sees that the same girl is walking with her friend down 13th st as well. He was a bit shocked and couldn't quite get his head together at the moment. He notices that her friend and her go into this tiny little sandwich shop right by our school and they go upstairs to eat.


He stands there blankly staring at the sandwich shop and the strange way the wind blows in NYC. He walks up to the lady that is behind the register and asks her "Did you see the girl that was in the striped shirt that went upstairs just now?" The lady says yes, with a perplexed look on her face. And my friend hands the lady behind the register the card and asks her if she could please hand that to her when she comes down to pay.

The lady looks at the card, turning it over back and forth and also with a gigantic smile looks up and says "Yeah, i can definitely do that"

Hopefully, the girl will receive the card with utter shock, not knowing who it was that gave it to her and will smile again.

Looks like many people smiled from this today.

But the girl doesn't know

I was talking to my friend today, who happened to have some of the cards i recently made in his wallet and he told me of the latest one that he gave.

Like all good experiences, this one is full of social stigma.

My friend was riding on the train and across from him was sitting a girl. She was just beautiful as he phrased it, but for some reason she was looking sad. He decided that he was going to give her a card and prepped one wondering when to hand it to her.

She gets up and starts to walk out of the train, and he rushes to her and taps her on the shoulder, but unfortunately she didnt feel the tap and just kept going. At the last moment of brilliant thinking, he noticed that her bag was open and he slipped the card in without her even realizing. He said he felt great about it, thinking that she'll find it sometime and not have any idea where it came from. it could be later in the day, tomorrow or even a week from now. (i'm not familiar with how often women clean out their purses)

But the fun part is that he still had to ride the train after and could only imagine what every other passenger who saw this happen was thinking.

Boy taps girl on shoulder, girl doesnt respond, boy slips something into her purse

Sounds shady to me. The rest of his trip must have been real fun :)

its tough but sometimes it just makes you feel good

So, after the last post its been a bit saddening. I really was bothered by my failure. But one of the things that i do want to stress is that this kind of stuff is not easy. I know many of my friends are able to go and chat up just about anyone but that doesnt mean that all people are that capable. I'm very capable of speaking to strangers, i can speak in front of large audiences, i have no stigma or fear of public speaking whatsoever, i could not be a "public performer" if i was afraid. But despite that, its still a struggle to openly convey your feelings to a stranger and in front of other strangers. This is something that i hope begins to change as the barriers between us get smaller, and we move towards a community that is reliant on each other.

Knowing just how challenging this is, there are times when something reassuring does happen. When all of a sudden you feel like you are getting somewhere and you are changing something. These moments, although they do not come quite often, they do happen. I can't even properly describe how great i felt when i received an email saying the following:

"I like your website. I hope I get a card one day; I guess I'll have to start smiling at strangers more."

This made my day, week, month and probably year. Whoever you are, ill make a card with you in mind. Ill make sure to send it out with the wind through some stranger or other, and i hope that at some point it reaches you. Thanks for the email, it really made me smile :)

What is it in our society? or me?

Talk about failure, I feel awful. I failed to give a card to this girl today, although i had decided i was going to do it about half an hour before i did, but i just couldn't. I get on the Q train which was empty and sit down. All of a sudden this girl runs into the train and sits directly across from me, we made eye contact, she looked away and started to smile. It was beautiful, i felt great, whether it was because of me or just because something good happened, but her smile made me feel excellent. I obviously smiled as well. We continue to catch each others eye, each grinning in turn. I decided that i was going to give her a card so i reach into my wallet, pick out the card with the cutest illustration i had and put it into my back pocket for easy access. I couldn't give it to her right then because i have this self imposed rule that i need to give these cards and walk away. This is because i do not want them to be mistaken as a flirtation tool, although i know many of my friends have used them as such. So i just held on hoping that she was not going to get off at the next stop.

The train service was interrupted and we needed to get onto the shuttle bus, it was a mess of people running to the bus, i lost her in the crowd and walked around looking at the buses to see if she was on one of them already. Suddenly she was right in front of me and gave me another great smile as we make eye contact. We get on the bus which was packed and ended up at different parts of the bus. Time passes and i keep glancing over, making sure she was still there. The bus mostly empties and we are standing very close to each other. I reach into my pocket and hold the card, deciding when i will give it.

This is when the disaster began. She picks up her bags and starts walking towards the front of the bus. I panic, thinking "oh no".. i start nervously grasping the card and looking around. All i needed to do was walk up to her as she was leaving the bus but for some reason, all i could think about were the other passengers. I kept thinking that everyone would think i was trying to flirt, i would have to stay on the bus as she left and everyone would just look at me, like a hopeless romantic. I got embarrassed before there was even a need to get embarrassed. I wasn't hitting on her, i just simply wanted to make her smile one more time, and to thank her for making my ride amazing. But i couldn't.

This all makes me wonder, is it something in me or is it something in the culture that i was raised in that has some kind of stigma about just doing a good thing to a stranger? Why did i feel i would be judged, why was i embarrassed, why wasn't i feeling proud about the act i was about to do? What is it about me and NYC that made me freeze and fear doing something nice to her just because of what the rest of the people on the bus would think of me.

Perhaps i'm just weak, and too shy for my own good. But here are the pictures of this card, since i decided to give it to her, it is only for her, and since i failed to give it to her, im going to burn it and apologize.

To the pretty girl, in the white flower jacket with the hearts on your shoes, You really made me smile and i'm sorry that i couldnt properly thank you.

Wow its been a while

Allright, it has been a long long long time since I have posted anything on here. Unfortunately life sometimes gets the better of me. But I now plan about putting this into full throttle again. And to initiate here's the cards I made today as proof that I really am not slacking.       :)   I hope you all are as excited as I am about this .

RR

Rubix cube

Its been a really really long time, since I have had a chance to give out any of these cards. As we all know sometimes life just tends to get a little crazy, and it becomes hard to find time to concentrate only on ourselves, opposed to the obligations that we have to others. That's why I began to think that I had lost the ability to come up to a stranger and hand them a card, I feel that often times this is something that we need to train ourselves to do, it is not easy talking to a complete stranger and especially not handing them a card.
     Getting onto the 2 train tonight at around 2 am, I saw a very pretty girl with headphones waiting for the train. We ended up on the same train going local. She sat down in a seat, gave me a slight glance and then pulled out a rubix cube. Rubix cubes are always fascinating because I can sit with one for about 24 hours and still not solve it. She had solved it in a matter of stops. She sat there with an immense smile of satisfaction on her face as she mixed up the rubix cube one more time. I knew that I would be getting off the train soon and was hoping that before I get off I could see her solve it again. Sure enough 1 stop before I was leaving she solved the cube again. She again smiled with immense satisfactions and it was one of the cutest smiles i'd seen. As I pulled into my station, I walked right up to her, looked her in the eye, smiled and handed her a card. She gave me the greatest smile as she looked at the card. I left the train as she was grinning ear to ear, turning the card over and over again.
It was a good good day :)

Spirit people

So I was working on Halloween. Later that night when I got off I just walked to the bar to have a couple drinks and shoot some pool. There were people in costumes everywhere. Sometime that night I received a really awful phonecall that totally killed my mood. I was feeling really down and wanted to just go home and sleep. But I ended up sticking around for a bit, and saw 3 people come in and set up a table. I would assume that they were hippies, they put up a big sign that said "spirit animal poems"... what they were doing was telling peoples fortunes through poetry and determining their spirit animal. This was all done by listening to a story that the person told. Somehow or other they got me to sit down and tell them a story while they determined my fortune. I don't believe in fortunes and other things but I like the whole atmosphere of the experience, so I complied. Somehow or other I felt a little better afterwards. The poem didn't make any sense at all, one of the most absurd things I've read, kind of like spam mail where random words are juxtaposed, but hey its about the experience. They told me that I restored their faith because apparently the guy before me was really awful, and full of problems. This made me laugh because I knew the guy who came before me, and he does have his issues. I wanted to give them a little something as well because they made me feel better, somehow. So I went over to my backpack and on the spot made them 3 cards, one for each of them. I then walk over and place the cards in front of them, smile and walk back next door to the bar. Later they came over to the bar and gave me a massive hug, a group hug, and one of the girls gave me a kiss on the cheek. They said thank you and gave me gigantic grins... :)

Sign language song

I was riding the path into hoboken and across from me there was a woman who was listening to her ipod. However she had her eyes closed and the entire time it looked like she was translating the song into sign language. It was a pretty incredible thing to see. I wanted to give her a card but because I lost mine last week and I haven't had a chance to make new ones, I realized I didn't have anything to give her. Then I realized my friend always had some in his wallet so I steal one back from him. The card said " I hope you don't mind that I put down in words, how wonderful life is with you in the world." Quoting elton. We both get off at hoboken and I tap her on the shoulder and hand her a card. She smiles and says thank you. ... :)

Passed on

I gave a card a couple weeks ago to a friend. He came back today telling me that the cards were awesome. He passed them on to a friend, she passed it on and it went through about 5 people, now its somewhere unknown. Hopefully on to a 6th person... :)

Lost them again

I am amazing haha. I lost my packet of cards this morning. They fell out of my pocket as I was biking to school. Another batch of potential smiles, ending up in the landfill. Please find them and hand them out. Please please please :(

Prep work

I made the template for 70 more cards. Ran out of my last batch. I decided I would probably put the barcode in the space under the text in the front of the card. I'm gonna experiment with sizes and try to get a rubber stamp laser cut so that its not printed. Its all about the making it by hand aspect for me... :)

Union sq musician

As cold as it was today, I ended up in union square waiting for a class to meet. While there I ended up sitting down next to a guy playing guitar. He asked me for a cigarette as I was eating my coffee and bagel. I gave him a smoke and we got into a long conversation. He asked me what kind of art do I do, and I pulled out a card and handed it to him. He looked at it, and then started smiling and asked can I keep this. I said ofcourse and he put it in his guitar case. He played some beatles for me and then I had to go. We said our goodbyes with smiles.... :)

So through a little experimenting, I found out that if I change the colors of the code around, it still works. This is so much less obscene than if it was black and white on the brown paper that I make the cards on. Im gonna figure out how to do this soon. I need to figure out the ideal size so that it isnt so obtrusive, find out how if I should print it directly onto the paper, probably or onto a sticker paper. Also I am beginning to look into QRMe codes which are the same but they can be tracked so that everytime someone scans it, I know where they scanned it, that could begin to show me if these cards are traveling or atleast how often these are being scanned. If anyone has any suggestions, I'll be glad to hear them. Thanks... :)

Cute smile on the train.

So I get on the train with my friend, heading back uptown. There was a very cute girl sitting down as we get on. She kind of glanced up and smiled. My friend leaves and I'm riding a couple more stops uptown, as I'm getting off she is still sitting down, and I walk over and drop it on her lap and walk off. She was confused but was reading the card as the train pulled away... :)

Equal exchange

So I was standing outside a diner with my friends, we were smoking cigarettes and a woman comes up and asks us to buy a cigarette. Zack says sorry I just bummed this off of someone, which he did...me, and I reach over and hand her a cigarette. She thanks me profusely and asks if she could give me a dollar. Zack says no, but you have to do something for us now, she says sure anything, he looks at me and says "card" and I pull out one of the cards. He says "its true, but you have to pass this on to someone as well." She says absolutely. This is awesome.... :)

QR

So I'm now thinking of putting these custom barcodes on all the cards. When scanned in a phone with a camera and QR software, most phones have this now. The message in this one says " you really really do have a gorgeous smile, I'm not lying .... iwantasmile.blogspot.com".     try it out if you can

Staring

I was walking out of the parsons building, and I see to girls standing having a conversation in front of the door. I made eye contact with one of the girls without realizing it because I was staring, she was looking back as well. I walk outside and look back again and she was looking at me as well. So I reach into my pocket and decide I'm going to give her one of the cards. I look back into the building and all of a sudden she's not there. I look around and see that she and her friend had already started walking down the block. I literally start running, her friend here's me running and turns around, I ignore her and tap the other girl on the shoulder, she literally jumped like she was shocked, and in that moment of shock I smile and hand her the card, turn around and walk away... today has just been a good day :)

Wow

So me and my friend zack are sitting at this bar called spain. And all of a sudden a girl walks by us to go to the bathroom. My heart almost stopped, one of those girls that you don't want to rip her clothes off the second you see her but rather one that is so beautiful that you just want to be able to look at her forever. All conversation stopped as we waited for her to walk by again. She did and then zack said get a card ready. I took out one of the cards that said " hey stranger... you are just unbelievably, indescribably, undeniably beautiful... with an illustration on the back that said "I'm so embarrassed".... I have the card ready and she was getting ready to leave the bar, but she just wouldn't, she kept getting stuck in more and more conversation, I kept looking over to see if she was walking out yet, but she wouldnt . This little game went on for a while as people just kept on talking to her. Zack says "I've never wanted a girl to leave the bar so much in my life"... finally she walks out and I run out after her. I yell excuse me and she turns around. I tell her "you dropped this" and she says " o oo ok" and nervously takes it from me. I turn around and walk back into the bar before i could even glance a reaction. No matter how many times I do this, I somehow still get butterflies in my stomach every time... it doesn't get easier .... :)

I don't like it...

So today my friend who was at the bar last night after I left, told me about what happened to the card that I had given to Jen. Jen had apparently given it to her friend who was with her. And her friend had really liked the bouncer. So her friend took the card and with a pen, wrote down her name and number on it, and handed it to the bouncer. I personally don't like the use of the card in that way, it seems to eliminate its purpose. Although I know that once the card is in someone elses hands, I have no control over it. That's one of the things that I love about this though, is that its so easy to change and adapt. Make your own and use it for some other purpose, that's fine. As long as the bouncer smiled the card served its purpose, however the cards life ended there as it could no longer be passed on. That's what I don't like about the situation. I wish that these cards will travel and travel and hopefully some day one may end up back in my hands. Well... I know it won't be the card with hollys name and number on it unfortunately.... :(

Home depot receipt

So my friend zack, was riding the subway heading home. As he's on the train a girl walks in with a guy and they sit across from zack. They weren't talking, the girl was crying and it seemed to zack that they were a couple, and that they had just gotten into a fight. At least this was what their body language and zacks intuition were telling him. Zack kept looking at this girl, who kept tearing up and wiping her eyes. And then it suddenly hit him how much she needed to be cheered up. He opened his wallet to look for one of the cards but realized that he didn't have any. All he had was a home depot receipt. He took the receipt, grabbed a pen and on the back of the receipt he wrote, "you are gorgeous, please pass this on to someone you feel is gorgeous as well" and as he was getting off at his stop he walks over to her and sets it on her lap. The train pulled away and he couldn't see a reaction, but I do hope that she smiled. ... the "you are gorgeous" home depot series... haha...... :)